Wicked, Wicked (1973)

Best movie of this year hands down!

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This movie has several strikes against it from the outset. First off, is the split-screen ("duo-vision") gimmick, which is effective when used sparingly by filmmakers like Brian DePalma (or going WAY back silent French filmmaker Abel Gance), but is pretty annoying when used extensively (check out the ill-advised sequel "More American Graffitti"), and likely to give many viewers a splitting headache. Then there is the killer who is stalking a seaside hotel. The movie not only makes no attempt to hide his identity from the start, but the clues he leaves along the way are so incredibly obvious that you want to scream at the protagonist (a dimwitted, womanizing security guard)for not being able to figure out who he is. Finally there's the wretched theme song ("Wicked, wicked, that's the ticket. . .") that was apparently actually sung by actress Tiffany Bolling, who should have stuck to stripping off in bad movies like this (and speaking a stripping off, Bolling takes her usual gratuitous shower in this movie behind a particularly opaque shower curtain, just to add insult to injury).Despite all this though, I kind of enjoyed this movie. It has an enjoyably nasty sense of humor, and only in the 1970's could anyone possibly get away with making a wrongheaded experiment in cinematic ineptitude like this and still have it backed by a major studio (MGM). As for those who find this misogynistic or offensive, check out a couple other Tiffany Bolling vehicles/feminist treatises "The Candy Snatchers" and "Centerfold Girls" sometime!

I admire any movie that tries to change the language of film, even though such efforts nearly always fail. 3-D was a fad that was almost never used properly ('Inferno' being a rare exception). Smell-O-Vision and Odorama were never more than stunts. 'The Door in the Wall', with its fascinating use of Dynamic Frame, proved too unwieldy for exhibition on a large scale.'Wicked, Wicked' was filmed in something cried Duo-Vision ... which means that, except for the opening credits, the entire film is shown in split-screen. Now, split-screen is a valid story-telling device when it's used intelligently and sparingly. A great example is in 'The Silence of the Lambs', during the exciting sequence in which Clarice Starling and a team of FBI agents are going to two separate houses simultaneously. But 'Wicked, Wicked' has two things happening at the same go for the *entire* movie. Sadly, one of them is (mostly) irrelevant, and the other one is painfully trite.SPOILERS COMING THICK AND FAST. At the beginning of the movie, we see a woman seat herself at an organ and begin playing some Phantom of the Opera music, which she continues to play throughout the film. She's dressed in an elaborate formal outfit that would be appropriate for a concert-hall recital, yet she's all alone. Also, the actress cast in this role is so spectacularly ugly that I couldn't believe her looks were coincidental. I was positive she was going to turn out to be a supernatural witch, or something similar. No; her looks *are* irrelevant. In fact, this woman and her organ music are completely irrelevant. She sits there fingering her organ through the entire film, yet she never interacts with any of the other characters, nor do any of them seem to hear her organ music. The scriptwriter just wants to have *two* events occurring simultaneously (for the sake of the split-screen gimmick), so we get this irrelevant organ recital.The main plot concerns a resort hotel in a remote location. The very pretty Tiffany Bolling arrives as a black-haired nightclub singer who's been booked by the hotel. Her black hair doesn't match her fair complexion. Um, but some nutter is killing brunettes, so the local cop decides she ought to turn blonde as a matter of self-preservation. Bolling spends most of the flick as a blonde, and looks much prettier with long golden locks than with long raven tresses ... but she looks a natural blonde who was pretending to be brunette, not the other way round.The identity and whereabouts of the psycho are no mystery, as we watch him (on one-half of the split-screen) through most of the film. Randolph Roberts plays a disaffected youth whose mother was mean to him, so now he's just gotta go slicing pretty girls. Guess who he's picked out as his next victim.Tiffany Bolling is no actress, but she's so damned pretty that I kept watching. Still, it's painful to hear her singing this movie's awful title song 'Wicked, Wicked ... that's the ticket...' on one side of the screen while Roberts flicks his knife on the other side of the screen. I kept expecting the old Warner Brothers cartoon gag where the character on one side of a split screen reaches across the partition to the other side.Character actress Madeleine Sherwood, whom I've always liked, is stuck here in a pathetic role as a sub-Tennessee Williams dowager who has fallen on bad times, and is desperately trying to avoid eviction from the hotel after her money has run out. If you're waiting for this subplot to link up with the psycho killer or his blonde prey, keep waiting. Soon after this, Sherwood's acting career declined to the point where she ended up doing low-budget commercials for Hansel & Gretel cold cuts. I used to confuse Madeleine Sherwood with silent-film actress Madeline Hurlock, who married playwright Robert Sherwood.'Wicked, Wicked' is written and directed by Richard L Bare. Despite this film, I've a lot of respect for Bare's career. He had extensive film and television credits -- including the entire run of 'Green Acres' after the pilot episode, plus some classic 'Twilight Zone' episodes -- and he also wrote an excellent textbook on film directing. He was probably hoping that 'Wicked, Wicked' would be his prestige hit ... but it's just boring and pretentious. I'll rate this movie 2 points out of 10: one point out of kindness to Bare, and one point because Tiffany Bolling is so sexy.

Gruesome serial killer schlock from the once mighty MGM before It remembered it had a treasure box of classics to cut up into docos, this is the sort of awful film major studios make today. Sort of SCREAM meets HOTEL (which indeed might be a good idea to a suit in Hollwood right about ...now).....using the dual image or cinemasope cut in half, it rendered the viewer dizzy by reel 2.. .......... ....when the girl in the bikini gets the bread knife in the guts over and over and over and over and over....just like they want you to enjoy today (WOLF CREEK). Maybe Tarantino could remake it on that possibility alone and we can laugh as illiterate critics label it 'cool' and dear Quentin can enjoy putting more imagery of mutilated females on the wide screen. Anyway.....it is all there in 1973 in gory banal grossness. Whoever said it should be DVD reissued with a co feature of NIGHT OF THE LEPUS is right. Stabbings and rabbits. Sounds very Multiplex 2006 to me.

OK, if you've heard anything about this movie, it's that the entire thing is in split-screen. 1970 was in the period when movie gimmicks were dying; William Castle had turned to producing with "Rosemary's Baby" and given up directing, 3-D was dead, and the audience participation concept was eradicated. "Wicked Wicked" must have been a nice return to the selling gimmick. Only this time, you didn't get items as a gimmick (bloody axes, 3-D glasses, plastic coins, barf bags), the whole movie viewing experience was a gimmick. Unfortunately, the makers of the movie thought that the split-screen effects would make "Wicked Wicked" a great film. In fact, it's just the opposite.I have always loved the idea of split-screen techniques used in movies (employed heartily by Brian dePalma for "Carrie", "Dressed to Kill", and others) and jumped at the chance of seeing this when I heard of the gimmick. Here's the final verdict: fun to watch, just don't take it seriously. The plot is flimsy (a murderer is stalking a hotel) and most of the acting horrible. But how can a movie go wrong with Tiffany Bolling in the cast? Beautiful blonde Tiffany Bolling spends half the movie in a black wig, the other with her gorgeous blond locks playing a lounge singer stalked by the killer. This woman steals the show, just like she does in "Kingdom of the Spiders" and "The Candy Snatchers". The music is atmospheric and makes for great background music, but is finally pushed to the point of head-splitting annoyance!If you enjoy split-screen and Tiffany Bolling, watch the movie. If not, you will probably find the whole thing tedious (which most of it is) and a cheap attempt to win an audience. Doesn't work a horror film, but will definitely win a larger cult if MGM just releases this on video (likewise with "Night of the Lepus" and "Private Parts"!).